By
The Associated Press
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Typhoon Xangsane whirled away from Taiwan and closer to southern Japan yesterday, leaving 54 dead and 32 missing in the island's worst flooding in three decades, officials said.
The death toll from the storm, which also killed 40 people and left 66 others missing in the Philippines last week, does not include a Singapore Airlines plane that crashed while taking off Tuesday at the Taipei airport. Swirling gusts and torrential rains of the approaching typhoon may have played a role.
A search continued yesterday for 23 crew members of a Panamanian cargo ship, the Spirit of Manila, which sank off Hualien harbor on the eastern coast as Xangsane hit Taiwan, the government disaster relief center said.
The ship sent a distress signal shortly before it sank early Wednesday. Taiwan's coast guard managed to find a 26-year-old Indonesian sailor who said the ship broke into three pieces from the strength of the wind, the relief center added.
"The winds were very, very strong," Tahar, who like many Indonesians carried only one name, told Taiwanese cable channel TTV.
Xangsane - which means "elephant" in Thai - had weakened to a tropical storm with winds below 74 mph as it passed the East China Sea and moved toward Okinawa, Japan, the Central Weather Bureau said.
Premier Chang Chun-hsiung said Taiwan experienced its worst flooding in 30 years, as Xangsane (pronounced Chang-SHARN) swept across the northern part of the island. Officials estimated that crop and property damage was about $500 million.
In the city of Keelung, 15 people were drowned as they prayed while trapped in the basement of a Buddhist temple. Fourteen people drowned in a home for senior citizens while waiting for rescue workers, local media reported.
Yesterday, divers and rescue workers were paddling through flood waters and picking up residents stranded near their half-submerged houses and cars. Residents also were searching through mud in their neighborhoods for household appliances and groceries.
Packing winds of up to 90 mph, the center of the typhoon hit Taiwan early Wednesday and stuck close to the eastern coast as it traveled north. By late Wednesday, Xangsane moved away from the island.
